Letters from Beirut

The Ledbury Festival introduces poetry from around the world - including the best new writing from Lebanon

Abdo Wazen was born in Beirut in 1957. He is a poet and culture editor of the international daily newspaper al-Hayat.
"The window is often present in my poetry. The window separates the inside from the outside, the self from the world, the darkness of memory from the light of imagination, the paper from the sky's blueness. It is the unending spectacle that no horizon can limit. When I stand behind it I see the world in a different way."

Window
Do not stand long before the window and do not stare farther than your eyes can.
The lace is not bored in your hands and the needle wants more of your fingers' warmth.
You have many days to sit on your chair, be silent, wait - and no one will come.
You have many dreams to weave with your needle, and a Sun will rise.
If you look in the mirror you might see a face that was yours and eyes that light up without tears. You might catch a glimpse of your young shadow passing like a ray.
Do not stay long before the window, for the light might burn your skin, or the air might bathe your shoulders, and boredom cast out your looks like clouds.
You will sit on your chair, and knit my heart into a sweater for your next winter.

Translated by Sinan Antoon. From Saraj al-Fitna (The Lamp of Enchantment), published by Dar an-Nahar, Beirut

Zainab Assaf is a young Beiruti poet, literary critic for the daily newspaper an-Nahar and editor of the new Naqd (Critic) magazine.
"In this poem I used my name, which has religious connotations (perhaps the way Frida Kahlo used her face in all of her paintings) to represent something like a collective portrait of many women who live in a closed religious environment, myself included."

Extract from "Prayer for the Absent"
A thousand other girls have the same name: Zainab
In the Shi'ite canton
dreams carry themselves
as if God drew our features in a hurry
Like happiness, our eyes are stolen
some of us play up the charms
and cast away sorrow with colours
Some of us make our black dresses
sails for bearded young men
But it is that same name
wailed during Ashura
And so we cry,
We cry for an impossible love
we cry our personal epics.
Each one of us becomes a real Zainab
who carries heads to slaughter with a smile.
She marches with the prisoners
but who sees her?
Who will aid Zainab when she calls out?
(When my grandmother hung this iron collar round
my neck, she said: You must learn to deserve it)
And I am still trying

Translated by Sinan Antoon. From Salaat al-Ghaeb (Prayer for the Absent), published by Dar Mokhtarat, Beirut

Bassam Hajjar was born in 1955 in Tyre, south Lebanon. Since 1980 he has published ten collections of poetry, along with translations of French poetry, novels and philosophy.
"The question which haunted me in this collection, of which this is the title poem, was how to grapple with the loss of a loved one. Perhaps the most resilient trace (or memory) is the stone, clay, gypsum or granite that marks roads and shrines, or marble which, in our culture (as well as other cultures), often points to the 'abodes of the dead' . . . and to their near-distant shelters."

Extract from "The Interpretation of Marble"
I don't mind,
when I look,
absent-mindedly,
from the edge of fifty -
the commotion of pedestrians on a wide street,
down there,
where the shops are,
the taxicabs,
a bunch of students and workers and the unemployed,
policemen,
fathers who are looking for a safe place
in which to keep the pleasures of seeking,
the hardships of seeking,
day by day,
until the seeking day is over,
and the shortest among them,
the most short-lived,
finds refuge in a night of doubts and suspicion.

Translated by Anton Shammas. From Tafseer Al-Rukham (The Interpretation of Marble)